blog

By Robbie Sefton Here’s a paradox. In that vast area of Australia outside major cities known – often dismissively – as “rural and regional areas”, the education sector is one of the biggest employers. And yet educational outcomes for the regions are well below those of cities. In the major cities, nearly a third of working-age people have a university degree. In the “inner regions”, the ...
Continue reading

By Robbie Sefton So much hope invested in that weekend rain front: and much disappointment followed. Inevitably, though, this drought is going to be with us for a long time to come. Even when the rain deficit corrects itself, farmers will be carrying a drought-induced financial deficit on their books, perhaps for years. Since Alistair and I moved our farming business from Western ...
Continue reading

By Robbie Sefton Every successful enterprise has good management at its core. That includes Apple, which recently became the world’s first trillion-dollar company, and the family farm. Successful entrepreneurs are applauded for building their enterprises single-handedly, but inevitably, entrepreneurial success is built on a solid foundation of good management and the largely unsung people who ...
Continue reading

By Robbie Sefton Like many, I enjoy looking for great books, podcasts or stories about people who make a difference and truly contribute to others’ lives by sharing their learnings. Recently I listened to an ABC Radio National podcast called “Freedom and responsibility”, which was an interview with former Netflix chief talent officer Patty McCord. McCord’s views resonated with what I’ve ...
Continue reading

By Robbie Sefton How are we going? Sometimes we need to sit back and take stock. That applies to our own lives and businesses, and to our agriculture sector as a whole. This is also easier said than done, as I am only too aware. There are always things that must be done before we take a break — and while we do those things, there goes the day/week/year. It has been five years since I had the ...
Continue reading

By Robbie Sefton Drought is an inescapable part of farming we all face in Australia. Because its impact is so wide – affecting output, productivity and income – it is also probably one of the biggest challenge farmers and the service providers they use face. Bureau of Meteorology data shows we have just had the third-lowest April rainfall on record across southern Australia, with the lowest ...
Continue reading

By Robbie Sefton It’s been getting some bad press, but I love this digital age we have arrived at in the 21st Century. In common with 95% of Australia’s adult population, I carry with me a small slab of glass and metal encasing far more computing power than was used to put people on the moon. There is a full office in this little device: it allows me to communicate, read documents and ...
Continue reading

By Robbie Sefton On the farm, we have just wrapped up a month of shearing. All went well, except that this year’s shearing went a week longer than usual with the same number of sheep. Our excellent contractor was, as usual, efficient and brought a good team of shearing pros. But for three weeks, he was down two shearers. There is a world shortage of shearers. This has hit especially hard ...
Continue reading

By Robbie Sefton   We have been hearing a lot about “agtech”, a phrase that frames a lot of things, from sensors to drones to Big Data to smartphones. Technological advances are at the centre of the ambition expressed in a new National Farmers Federation/KPMG report, recently launched by the Prime Minister, to have Australian agriculture grow by 70 per cent to be a $100 billion ...
Continue reading

By Robbie Sefton Farming has become an immensely complicated and information-intense occupation, to the degree that some farmers have begun borrowing a centuries old strategy from corporations to support their business. For more than 500 years, corporations have outsourced some of their intelligence gathering and decision-making to boards of directors. Faced with an avalanche of ...
Continue reading

By Robbie Sefton As our elected representatives begin the Parliamentary year in Canberra – amidst some fairly unpleasant controversy – I’ve been thinking a lot about what leadership means. As Deputy Chair of the National Australia Day Council I’m lucky to meet some of Australia’s most inspiring community leaders. This extraordinary group of people – 32 finalists in all, from each State and ...
Continue reading

1 February 2018 By Robbie Sefton Are we ready for alternative meat? By “we”, I mean those of us who run livestock for meat production. Perhaps within 10 years, certainly within 20, we are not going to be the only ones in the animal protein game. Plant-based products from companies like Beyond Meat are on the market, and are apparently quite tasty. Beyond Meat has a cast of athletes ...
Continue reading

Resilience, tenacity and authenticity are in abundance in rural Australia. We also tend to be conservative, and don’t always throw ourselves readily into change. And why would we, when the weather, markets and the innumerable variables of farming dish out plenty of surprises? The farming life has enough unknowns without volunteering for more. But change is also the condition that produces ...
Continue reading

Farmers must be resilient to survive in the business. In any given year they deal with fires, floods, storms, drought, rain at the wrong time, pests, disease and market fluctuations. However, they also have to be innovative and not afraid to be different – two things Seftons is passionate about. The need for innovation and striving to be different were highlighted during the Farm Writers’ ...
Continue reading

Agriculture’s permanent war on invasive species sometimes feels like a version of modern warfare. Despite an immense and growing arsenal of weaponry, the adversary keeps coming, consuming more and more of our time, attention and capital.  The cost is astonishing. Australian agriculture loses between $3.5-$4.5 billion a year to weeds, in lost production and control costs. Invasive animals are ...
Continue reading

Among the many forms of tribalism rife in the world is one that is particularly dangerous to farmers — the myth of farmers versus the consumer. Consumers often don’t understand the complexities of farming, the myth goes, and they need to be better educated so that farmers can get on with business. Like all myths, this has an element of fact, but there is a much weightier fact on the other ...
Continue reading

The agriculture industry is growing at a phenomenal rate. But can it really be Australia’s next $100 billion industry? According to the latest figures agriculture is now the largest contributor to national GDP (gross domestic product) growth and the fastest growing economic sector, rising 23 per cent in the past 12 months. It is no surprise that the main drivers of this growth are the ...
Continue reading

There is a disconnect between the statistical category “farm labour” and every farming enterprise’s desire to employ “good people”, because good people seldom want to be just farm labour. Good people want to be part of a good enterprise. A good enterprise supports the ambitions, ideals, or self-worth — preferably the trifecta — of those that work within it. 2015 Nuffield Scholar Reece ...
Continue reading

The road into town or the road out of town? Providing happiness for people living in the country will bring more people to rural and regional areas. We are in the middle of the greatest human migration the world has ever seen: the movement of people from rural to urban areas. By 2050, the United Nations estimates that around 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in urban ...
Continue reading

Incubating interest in agriculture from early childhood right through school and university is important to lead and grow the industry. At the Farm Writers’ Association of NSW lunch in Sydney last week, speakers covered the topic: Incubating talent for Agriculture - K1 to Tertiary. We have probably all heard by now that by 2050 there will be 70 per cent or 2.4 billion more people on earth, ...
Continue reading

As a graduate of the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation program, my 32 fellow graduates and I wrote a vision for rural and regional Australia which focused on being able to get a good coffee – latte, cappuccino or soy macchiato, whichever you prefer – in the bush. Even in towns with fewer than 1000 people inhabiting them, the coffee machines are working overtime. Interestingly, 15 years ...
Continue reading

Regional roads, water, schools and hospitals were the main winners in the NSW 2017-18 state budget handed down yesterday. And $12 million in tax cuts for the farming sector also means the budget was a winner for agriculture too. A record $1.3 billion of funding in a Regional Growth Fund has been allocated to regional areas. NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said in his budget speech the ...
Continue reading

Loyalty, trust, relevant and competitive are the foundations upon which Bega Cheese executive chairman Barry Irvin does business. At a Farm Writers' Association of NSW lunch in Sydney last week, Mr Irvin spoke about his, at times, different approach to business, including the fact “loyalty and trust were the foundations of Bega Cheese and what allowed us to go forward”. From a single factory ...
Continue reading

Seftons’ managing director Robbie Sefton has shared her thoughts on decentralisation, believing investment in infrastructure and “big picture” thinking are vital to the economic prosperity of rural and regional Australia. Robbie spoke to presenter Paul Turton on ABC New England North West about the issue, which has attracted headlines recently after Coalition partners The Nationals announced a ...
Continue reading

Farmers and regional Australia have been labelled as winners in the 2017-18 Federal Budget. Major funding for the Inland Rail and ongoing funding to the National Landcare Program are just some of the highlights for the agriculture sector. However, despite calls by the National Farmers Federation to allocate funding to fix mobile black spots and the Data Drought, no new money has been put ...
Continue reading

We can safely say – in my opinion – that we’re in a time of great political uncertainty as 2017 gets underway. The heat’s on – not just physically (with Sydney and other parts of NSW on course to recording the hottest January ever) – but politically and culturally. Public unrest and division over the election of Trump in the USA and Britain’s decision to leave the European Union are all ...
Continue reading